+ Her Barefoot Heart

Tag: new years plans

burn

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i hate sunday nights. i love sunday nights.

sunday nights are a transition time for me. the end of the pause. the threshold of beginning.

i am ready for my husband to go back to work. i want him to call in sick tomorrow.

i want to watch another movie. i am ready to get up and move.

i do not want go to back to a life of to do lists. i long for the structure of plans and productivity.

i am a different person. i am the same person trying to be different.

i want to spill things onto the page. i don’t have a damn thing to say.

i love the way i’m beginning to drop down into some philosophical, reflective writing (except for yesterday – that piece was pretty blah). i am tired of being serious, longing to cut loose and romp.

i want to change my update on facebook. i want to drop facebook altogether.

i want to finish my collage. i want to rip up the ripped out bits and flush them.

i want to sing and dance. i want to go to bed and sleep in the fetal position.

i want to twitter. i want to tuck in.

i want to get something done tonight so i’ll be ahead of the game tomorrow. i don’t even want to think about doing anything tonight.

i want to find a book on the writing of lost. if i never see another book, it’ll be too soon.

etc.

etc.

etc.

~~~

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#mindfullist

leap

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today i leapt.

and i leapt with deliberation and thoughtfulness.

in the fiber arts community there’s a movement called slow cloth – just the name calms me. to live a life of calmness and space and rapt attention, that has been my dream, and today i am closer to that desired lifestyle . . .

gwen bell has developed a year’s worth of brief daily prompts intended to help cultivate a mindfulness lifestyle, and i am onboard. i am so onboard. today’s prompt: “Take time today to update your passwords. Make them bells of mindfulness, action-oriented words,” and so today finds me updating my passwords with verbs (and making sure everything is saved in 1password, the handiest software for mac users. it’s like having my own vault on the computer and on the iphone).

i also leapt into shuttersisters today. signed myself right up, committing to take and post a photo every day this year. i’m setting up a tumblr blog for the shuttersisters photos – i’ll let you know when it’s up and running, though i hasten to add that i am just a woman who enjoys photos, not a woman who would ever be confused with a photographer who knows what she’s doing.

january’s photo theme is create, and i’ve selected a photo of black-eyed peas, a southern staple – especially on new year’s day. thewordwire got me thinking about it yesterday, with her tweets about the southern delectables she was cooking up in her vegas kitchen. new years day is one of the rare days when i cook a full, resplendent meal, something my mother does frequently, and her mother did three times a day. i didn’t inherit the cooking gene – i don’t even collect cookbooks, though i’ve written a few from recipe collections of grandmothers.

my mother has an entire closet filled with plates and glasses and bowls. she sincerely enjoys entertaining, judging your love of her by how many times you go back for refills. she knows how to make people comfortable at her table. it is her native language.

her mother entered cake contests – and won a few, too. in the summer, she’d plant a huge garden, and every day would find her gathering items from the garden and cooking a big lunch (with biscuits made from scratch 3 times a day, i want you to know). the afternoons were spent shelling and shucking in the glider on the front porch then going inside for canning, freezing, and pickling.

these women that form the fabric of my matriarchal lineage created food that nourished and a table that welcomed.

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#mindfullist

conjuring is hard work

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though i made a valiant effort to talk myself out of doing it, if i do say so myself, i started work on my vision board, my creative collage, whatever you want to call it for 2010, and let me tell you: it’s harder than i remember. first off, the only magazines i have here are pottery magazines, fiber arts magazines, and a few catalogues. not a single oprah magazine in sight. resolved to working with what i have, i sighed audibly then began to flip through the magazines within reach. at first i would notice an attraction to something, then i’d immediately begin to explain and justify that attraction.

that’s NOT how it’s played, and i know it.

then i began to look for words and got hung up on the cliche phrases that kinda’ make my skin crawl but i figured folks would see them, like them, and find me enlightened.

or something.

that’s when i almost joined kelly in her search for a mountain. eventually, though, i pushed past all that crap and began ripping out images at will and just because.

not wanting to get up from my comfy position for reasons i can’t explain, i abruptly switched gears and began to create a list of things i want to do One Day, taking inspiration from shannon and emma (i actually stole borrowed a few from both – thank you, sweeties) because here’s the thing, folks: THIS IS HARD. ask me what i’m going to do tomorrow, and i can whip out a to do list before you finish the question mark. ask me what we need to accomplish by a week from today, and stand back because in under 5 minutes i’ll have a complete schedule complete with task analysis and shopping list. but give me a pen and a blank sheet of paper and ask me to list things i want to do just because, and i’m blank. lost. nada.

i am noticing that there aren’t so many physical adventures on the list, though i do want to run (read walk, mostly) a something-marathon with kipp – if he’ll have me, of course – and one of the items i stole borrowed from emma is dance naked in the rain (although it reads “dance nekkid in the rain” on my list).

travel seems a topic good for at least 5-10 entries, but nooooo. i can only think of a handful of places i want to go. climbing mountains? don’t think so. swimming in all the oceans? i hate sand on my body, so that kinda’ knocks that out now, doesn’t it?

maybe it’s time to switch gears here and set the vision board and list aside and just choose a single word for 2010. just one itty bitty word for 2010. and what, you might well ask, would that one word be?

finally, something easy in the conjuring of a new year. my one word for 2010? JustBecause.

resolutions, schmezolutions

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today’s Q: what resolution didn’t stick?

today’s A: n/a. not applicable because i stopped making resolutions long ago, and in doing so, i surrendered. i handed off control of my to others. here, i said, you, whoever you are, you be my rudder. you decide where i go, what i do, who i do it with. you decide my fate, my future, my now. i’ll just float along aimlessly and see what happens.

i quit with the resolutions because i felt inadequate and eroded when i didn’t stick to and complete them. i quit with the resolutions because i felt like i didn’t take up enough space in the world to be worthy of resolutions. i quit with the resolutions because i just didn’t think it was worth it. i didn’t think i was worth it.

but oh my goodness how much can change in a month’s time.

i still won’t make resolutions – but i will make something akin to plans. (not tonight, though, cause i’m watching mama mia.) (and i’ve had maybe a wee bit too much wine.) (but not enough to affect my spelling skills, just my planning skills.) (and don’t worry. i’m not leaving the house.) tomorrow, though. yes, tomorrow i will create a collage for 2010. tomorrow i become the architect of my own life.

and it may or may not involve words.

~~~

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i am holding my heart with both hands as i say thank you to gwen bell for putting this challenge together, and thank you to members of my new twitter tribe. i have, through this challenge and on twitter, found my right people – my tribe – and my life will never, ever be the same.

blogliography for this post:
acey
alana
angela
bryce
coach dian
danielle
emma
gwen bell
julie
julie
karen
kathy
kelly
lindsey
lisa sonora beam
molly
mandalove
mary
morag
mynde
nicole
rebecca
susan
thewordwire

zura
and my family: andy, alison, and kipp.
and other members of my twitter tribe who don’t have blogs.

best09
~~~
the stories are mine, but credit for the kindling goes to gwen bell and her best of 2009 blog challenge. today’s post answers the question “what resolution did you not keep in 2009?”
~~~

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#best09, #bestof2009